Ifalna - 2003
The station beneath the Shinra building had been shut down sometime during the war. The stark, unadorned reality of the empty platforms made their flight through it all those years ago feel like a dream. The still air smelled of cold, seeping.
Ifalna waited while others searched out the security cameras under the safety of Sephiroth's illusions. He hadn't known he could do that as a child, and she wondered how much of their flight had been recorded. Were the tapes buried somewhere in Shinra's archives, or erased to forget a failure?
"...this is where they shot you?" Aeris asked her quietly. She was looking about the station as though trying to decide whether it were familiar.
It didn't look as it had; the lights were dimmed and the signs overhead were blank, announcing neither arrivals nor departures. A single decommissioned train squatted on the tracks. Several Corel engineers climbed aboard to see if it was functional. It wasn't the plan, but it didn't hurt to have an alternate avenue of escape.
"Yes," Ifalna confirmed. Whatever Aeris remembered of the station, she must have remembered the terror of watching her mother bleed in the train compartment.
"You could stay back with us," Aeris proposed, and Ifalna smiled faintly.
"No. I need to go, for Lucrecia. For both of them."
Aeris nodded, and then she said, falteringly, "I can't... hear the Planet here."
"I know." Its voice has been lost to her as they climbed up through the train tunnels, as if the rush of a train going past had severed the connection. "Midgar makes it hard. It's so full of noise, so many people determined to be disconnected. It's... painful, but the Planet is still there."
"I didn't really... remember," Aeris admitted. "I thought it was there for us, in the lab. Maybe it was just your stories."
"I'm glad I made it real for you." Ifalna reached into her dress and pulled out the White Materia. "Why don't you take this, for now?"
Aeris gave her a look. "Mom. You can't give this to me now like you're worried you won't be able to keep it safe."
"That's not why. I want it to keep you safe. To help you feel connected."
Aeris took it, slowly. "...it's quiet, still."
Ifalna nodded. "And you can hold onto that, while we're in the building."
Aeris glanced towards where Sephiroth stood, maintaining his illusions, the power of Jenova. "It'll mean everything's okay," she said.
"Right." Everything would be okay.
Aeris didn't renew her earlier protests about staying behind. She hugged Ifalna, and they left her with their Corel allies on the tracks, tucked into the security cameras' blind spots.
Ifalna's heart leapt in her chest as they climbed over the disused turnstile. Her body screamed that she was going the wrong way, she remembered the pang in her side as she accepted the weight of Aeris's small body, Lucrecia just behind her, boots loud just behind her.
The others had stopped to look at her, because she'd frozen at the bottom of the motionless escalator.
"...you don't have to come," Sephiroth offered quietly. "You can wait with the others."
"No," she said, swallowing. "I'll be all right. I'm coming."
She couldn't let her fear paralyze her, but it was important for one of them to carry it. Jenova muted it in Sephiroth and Lucrecia, and Vincent had been trained out of it, and part of her envied them the ease with which they could push it aside, but there was something dangerous in ignoring it. They were entering a den of vipers, and they could not afford for one instant to forget that.
The sky outside the lobby windows was dark; night had fallen, and the building's average employees had left for the day. The lobby security guards didn't notice them, couldn't see them. Sephiroth walked silently up to one of them and unclipped the key card from his belt.
Apart from Nibelheim, Ifalna had never joined him and Lucrecia on their forays into Shinra facilities. They'd done this before, slipping in under cloak of illusion, stealing IDs, and checking into Shinra's activities. But those facilities had been remote: manufacturing plants and quayside guard stations. Had they been caught, they would have dealt only with a small security team.
That wouldn't be the case here. Once they moved Jenova, their presence would be known, and all they could do was prepare for that inevitability. She was sure Sephiroth and Vincent were making note of the number and positions of guards, keeping an eye out for automated security measures. They would report back, and return with their allies, and nothing would be quiet then.
Unlike before, they made for the elevators. The car was empty, and as they climbed inside, Ifalna remembered Sephiroth advising against it as a child.
"She should be on the 67th floor," Lucrecia said.
Sephiroth shook his head. "This card won't get us to 67."
"This elevator won't either. Try the private lounge on 61. Maybe we can find a lab tech on break."
Ifalna had almost forgotten that Lucrecia was the one who knew this building. For the roughly four years between her return to the Company and Gast's departure, she had commuted by choice to this awful place to see her son, and the most unbearable thing, she'd said, had been leaving it again to keep up the pretense of being a reliable employee.
The glass walls of the elevator left her feeling exposed as they climbed. The city lights of Midgar stretched out before them, so bright they occluded any of the stars that should have mirrored them overhead. Fitting, for a city that had tried to replace the sky.
The elevator stopped before reaching their destination, and they all tensed, but it was only an employee who got off again after a few floors, unaware he had ever shared the car. As the doors opened onto the 61st floor, two other employees were waiting to take the elevator down, and Ifalna held her breath as she slipped out past them.
The lounge was unexpectedly green, dominated by an enormous tree in its center. Smaller ones sat in evenly spaced alcoves along the walls, all meticulously cared for as one would care not for a living thing but for expensive decor. Ifalna reached out, instinctively, for these living things that could no more hear the Planet here than she could. There was something hollow in them; they lived, but couldn't thrive.
She felt Lucrecia's hand slip into her own, tugging her towards the cafeteria where a few employees lingered. Sephiroth was checking key cards while Vincent stood watch for any promising new arrivals.
There was something insulting in the mundanity of it all. The food in the lab hadn't been terrible, but it had been demeaning, her diet carefully formulated and provided for her without her say, as though she were an animal. Meanwhile, six floors down, the people who'd given it to her had come and pondered over the cafeteria menu, and if they had some small request to hold the onions, it would have been respected, because they were people.
The spark of anger was fleeting. These were people, and they wouldn't hesitate to put her and her family back in that lab, as though they weren't.
"It feels like a dream," Lucrecia murmured beside her. "The fact that I ever used to sit here, forcing my way through a meal. It feels like it happened to someone else."
"You've come a long way since then," said Ifalna.
Maybe not all of them felt the same, she decided. Judging by Sephiroth's ongoing search, most of these people didn't have access to the lab. They could be completely ignorant of what went on there.
Movement from Vincent caught her attention. A young man in a lab coat had stepped off the escalators, and Vincent smoothly intercepted him, unclipping his ID badge. The lab tech walked on to the cafeteria counter without noticing.
They all joined Vincent at the escalators, exchanged glances, and began the climb.
Save for the number on the wall, there was nothing to distinguish the 67th floor stairwell from any of the others. It unsettled her all the same. This was their last chance to turn back, she thought, even as she willed her feet forward after the others.
The lab's corridors were familiar in a way that made it hard to breathe. Ifalna flinched away as a lab tech stepped out of one of the rooms into the hall with them, but the woman walked past without a glance. They were like ghosts here, and there was nothing comforting in the thought.
It was Lucrecia who led the way into the part of the lab that housed its less human specimens. It wasn't hard to find what they were looking for; space had been cleared for a large glass tank, glowing a Mako green. From its base, a mess of cables uncoiled across the floor, forcing Ifalna's gaze down, at first, to keep from tripping.
Then she looked up.
It wore a face that must have belonged to one of her ancestors. A sharp pink gaze stabbed out at them from otherwise delicate features.
The sound of her own heart pounding in her ears jolted Ifalna back to herself. There was no one else here, but all of them had come to a stop before the tank. She looked quickly to Lucrecia. Was it speaking to her?
"We..." Ifalna swallowed. "We need to find a way to move this."
Lucrecia looked back at her. She seemed uneasy, but alert. "Right. There should be some equipment near the freight elevator. That's how they would have brought her in. I'll... I'll go check."
Ifalna decided to take it for a good sign that she was voluntarily removing herself from close proximity to Jenova. She was afraid of losing control, but she hadn't, yet. Vincent wordlessly peeled off after her, leaving Ifalna with Sephiroth.
Sephiroth and the Crisis from the Sky. He stood looking up at it, his expression calm. He had recounted a little of his visits to her, but he had never mentioned opening the door. He didn't seem surprised by its appearance. Had he seen it before in his mind?
"Is it... speaking?" Ifalna asked him cautiously.
Sephiroth let out a soft huff. "She says this would all be easier if we let her out. No equipment, no freight elevators, no need for our Corel allies. I wonder if she's accurately assessing her own strength."
Ifalna kept her gaze on him, avoiding the tank. She didn't know if Jenova was watching her, and didn't want to know. Her skin crawled. "...she shouldn't be underestimated."
"They've weakened her," Sephiroth said, gesturing to the tangle of cables. "I know she'd recover quickly, but quickly enough? This building is full of our enemies."
Ifalna didn't know who he included in 'our.' She swallowed and looked in the direction Lucrecia had gone, wishing she would return.
"It's all right," Sephiroth said, catching her unease. "We'll be out of here soon enough."
"Bringing it with us," Ifalna said. If their plan went smoothly, they'd put Shinra again behind them, but not Jenova. Could they really contain it themselves?
At what point in the plan would the White Materia pulse in warning? Ifalna realized she'd left it with Aeris in part so she wouldn't feel it. She didn't want to be deterred from ending Shinra's stewardship of the Crisis by the certainty of an even greater duty settling on her. One thing at a time.
"It'll be all right," Sephiroth repeated.
Ifalna tensed as he took a few steps closer to the tank, but his attention was on its base, inspecting the cables. They would need to detach them in order to move it.
She took a cautious step closer, thinking to help.
Sephiroth had worked his way around to the opposite side of the tank. There was a soft thwick she couldn't identify. Had one of them snagged a wire? Ifalna glanced around, and missed the precise moment when Sephiroth pitched forward. His hand thumped into the glass of the tank, but he couldn't seem to catch himself. He slid down, crumpling at its base.
"Sephiroth!?" Ifalna exclaimed, starting towards him.
"No, not her."
The voice brought her up short. Ifalna froze beside the tank, her eyes darting. Hojo appeared from behind a stack of crates, flanked by soldiers. There was something strange about their gear--the color of their goggles, the style of rifle--but Ifalna noticed them only on the periphery, her attention locked on Hojo.
"It's a relief he grew so much taller than you," he said. "The amount of sedative necessary for him would likely have killed you, and I don't know how well they can distinguish you in infrared."
Infrared? Ifalna thought dimly, and then the horror crept over her. Sephiroth was unconscious and his illusions had failed, but they had already been flawed.
"I see you're realizing it now. I thought you might be coming-- or at least, Sephiroth. You see, I'd realized someone had begun visiting the reactor outside of my staff, someone who couldn't be seen on camera. I had a look through the security database, and there are reports of lost key cards and apparent access malfunctions going back years. Each seemingly innocuous, but they form a pattern. You've all been doing this for a long time, haven't you? Disappearing from Shinra's sight by quite literally disappearing. It's impressive. I wish I'd realized it sooner."
They'd been so careful. They never should have relied on the power of Jenova. But it was Sephiroth's power, Lucrecia's power.
Where was Lucrecia?
Hojo must have interpreted something in the way her eyes widened, and he nodded behind him. A pair of soldiers hauled Lucrecia into view, stumbling between them. Blood ran down her face from a wound somewhere in her scalp, but she managed to look up at Ifalna. Vincent, she mouthed silently.
Ifalna's gaze darted over the rest of the soldiers. No sign of Vincent. They might have broken Lucrecia's illusions, too, but he'd gotten away. He could make it back to Aeris and the others and warn them that Shinra had expected them, that they didn't have the element of surprise.
Was that what Vincent would choose to do? Hojo was right here.
"I would appreciate it if you would comply without any fuss," said Hojo. "I have no desire to damage you."
Ifalna didn't move.
Hojo nodded again to the soldiers, and one of them pressed a gun into Lucrecia's side. "That woman, on the other hand... She's of no value to me."
Lucrecia's expression twisted into a grimace. "'That woman'? Can't you even say my name, Nibori?"
Hojo's jaw tightened, and Ifalna's heart clenched. Lucrecia had confided to her that Hojo hated to be called by his given name; she was one of the few who even knew it. Don't, Ifalna thought at her desperately. Don't provoke him, but she knew Lucrecia was as angry as she was frightened, if she even remembered to be frightened at all.
As Ifalna stood frozen, a few of the soldiers started towards her. Without thinking, she ducked behind Jenova's tank, as if that could buy her more than a few moments. Years ago, when she had offered herself up in an attempt to save her family, Gast hadn't let her. He'd been gunned down, and she'd been taken anyway, both their efforts rendered futile.
Lucrecia wasn't as fragile as Gast, but she would fight. She would fight if Ifalna didn't.
And Sephiroth lay unconscious on the other side of the tank, just as vulnerable now as the boy she'd first met. If he were retaken, he'd be bound even more tightly. Caged in a tank of his own, maybe.
Movement from within the tank drew Ifalna's attention upwards. The Crisis was looking down at her. It met her gaze, and then shifted that look meaningfully towards Hojo. There was hatred there, not for her, but for him.
Could a monster care about its offspring?
Sephiroth seemed certain of it. That Jenova cared about him in its own way, as an extension of itself, and would choose to protect him. Maybe it would protect Lucrecia, too, for the same reason. Neither of them could be infected, because they already carried its cells.
Aeris had the White Materia. She would feel it, and she would have time to get far from here, heeding the Planet's call. It wasn't a duty Ifalna had ever wanted to push onto her, but neither had she come here to let anyone take Aeris's brother from her. She had not come here to lose another lover.
It was so hard to make out anything of the Planet's voice here, but the tank was full of Mako. Processed into this congealed state, halfway between Lifestream and materia, it could nevertheless act as a conduit. It felt like thrusting her hands into rot, but Ifalna drew from it. At her touch, the glass of the tank froze solid. And at the crack of Jenova's head against it, it shattered.
Ifalna shielded Sephiroth and herself with wind, and as the Mako and broken glass swept past them, she squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for everything she'd ever been told. For Jenova's touch to infect her. For the erosion of her mind. The corruption of her body.
The monster passed her by.
The soldiers began to shout in horror. Ifalna risked opening her eyes in time to see them lift their rifles and open fire. Hojo was jostled aside, whatever orders he gave drowned out by gunfire and screams.
Jenova's appearance had already changed, even less human than it had been in the tank. Snapped wires trailed from its body as tentacles grew to join them, and the new appendages flashed out into the knot of terrified men.
A bullet whizzed past her, shaking Ifalna from her paralysis. She ducked behind the base of the tank, not only for safety but so she wouldn't witness the carnage that followed. Her stomach twisted, but she wasn't sure she felt anything for the soldiers, only for the uncertain future she'd unleashed on those who came after them.
Where would the Crisis stop? Would it stop? Or could it only be stopped, like before?
It was absurd to think it would be any different from before, and yet, from before were only stories, and now there was a shared enemy. A shared family. She had been counting on that to mean something.
The last of the gunfire was silenced in a wet thump. Ifalna risked a glance over the base of the tank and watched as Jenova flung Hojo clear across the room. He crumpled against the floor, but Ifalna couldn't tell if he was dead.
Metal screeched as an unseen force tore every camera in the room from the wall. The lenses shattered as they struck the floor. For a heartbeat, everything was silent. Jenova's twisted bulk dominated the lab, unmoving.
Ifalna cast about for Lucrecia. She sat stunned amid the corpses, spattered with blood, and Ifalna shifted to push herself up, wanting to go to her.
Jenova turned in her direction. This was the moment, she thought, but then she realized its gaze had settled not on her, but on Sephiroth.
Lucrecia noticed, too. "No! You can't have him!"
"He is already mine." Harsh echoes coalesced into a voice. The Crisis shot her a piercing glance, and Ifalna realized it spoke aloud for her benefit. "I will remove the poison."
Poison? Did it mean the sedative?
Ifalna levered herself to her feet, but before she could force herself any nearer to Jenova, the light of some kind of magic washed over Sephiroth. He stirred, and with a groan began to push himself up.
"Sephiroth...?"
"Ifalna? What..." He froze, the realization of Jenova's presence hitting him. She thought he felt it, without processing the shattered tank in front of him or seeing the monster looming behind him. He stared at Ifalna. "You let her out?"
"I... had to." Had she? What had she done?
Sephiroth slowly stood. Glass crunched beneath his boots as he turned to survey the bloody scene.
Across the room, Hojo stirred and groaned. Whatever else went through their minds, four sets of eyes turned at once with the same judgment.
Sephiroth stepped up beside Jenova. "Are you going to...?"
"No," it said. "I will preserve nothing of him. He will not be part of us."
Ifalna shivered at the sound of that voice, not wanting to understand it. What she did understand was that Jenova was not the one who moved forward.
It was Lucrecia, fumbling a hand around one of the abandoned rifles and staggering to her feet. "Did you... leave him for me?" she asked, but she didn't wait for any sort of answer. "Thank you."
Hojo had time enough to get his eyes open to see what was coming. The burst of rifle fire struck him in the neck and chest. Lucrecia stumbled with the kickback, tripped over a body, and fell. Ifalna ran to her.
"Lucrecia! Lucrecia." Ifalna dropped down beside her, ignoring the lifeless shoulder that nudged against her hip. "Are you all right?"
Lucrecia tore her gaze from Hojo. "Yes, I..." She lifted a hand to the gash on her head. "It's just this. The rest... isn't mine."
Ifalna drew on her magic, again a strain, and healed the wound. Then she unwound her scarf and began to use it to clean the blood from Lucrecia's face.
"They got Vincent with one of those darts."
Ifalna frowned. "I thought he got away."
"We were at the freight elevator. I pushed him in. I told him to get to Aeris and I sent him down."
"...I suppose he won't be out long," Ifalna said.
Five years, and they understood at least some things about the beast inside him. Strong emotion no longer brought it out, but injury did, and the change always healed him of whatever harm had triggered it. A tranquilizer dart would hold it at bay only long enough for anyone nearby to distance themselves.
The beast would reach the bottom of that elevator alert and furious. He could make it to Aeris, through any enemies that threatened her.
"...do you think he'll go to Aeris?" she wondered. She couldn't grasp how much time had passed, but he hadn't reappeared.
"He didn't see Hojo," said Lucrecia.
Aeris would be safe, surely.
Lucrecia's eyes widened suddenly, and Ifalna jerked to follow her gaze, watching as Jenova tore the last of Shinra's apparatus from its body. Inky blood gushed from the hole in its abdomen, spilling onto the floor, and Ifalna's hand stilled around the blood-soaked scarf. Was all of the blood on Lucrecia actually human?
It looked human, she decided, but she was uneasy now with it so close to her own flesh.
"Why did you let her out?" Lucrecia asked her, still staring.
"...for you. It... sees you and Sephiroth as part of itself, so it wouldn't hurt you."
Lucrecia looked at her. "And you?"
Ifalna didn't answer. Lucrecia's hands tightened around the rifle as if she meant to use it again, but her brow furrowed.
"...she says you aren't her enemy."
Was it only saying that so Lucrecia would relax her guard? Did it mean it? Ifalna didn't know. What she did know was that she was still alive for now, and Lucrecia and Sephiroth were no one's prisoners.
She finally let herself look at Hojo. His eyes were staring, his mouth slack, and his body perfectly motionless. She sensed nothing in him, already on his way back to the Planet.
The Crisis had rejected him, she realized. The Planet would accept even his rotten soul without judgment, but the creature had deemed him unworthy of itself. It might act on malice, but it was no slave to its nature. It chose the parts of itself.
And it didn't want her either.
She'd gotten most of the blood off Lucrecia's face, and Lucrecia gently pushed her hand aside. She rose to her feet and pulled Ifalna up with her. Sephiroth had come nearer to them to have his own look at Hojo's corpse, but Jenova hadn't moved from its position near the shattered tank.
Sephiroth looked to them. "What now?"
They'd come for Jenova, and Jenova could leave with them now on its own power--easier, and more terrifying. Ifalna didn't want to bring it nearer to Aeris, but they couldn't stay either.
Of a sudden, Jenova's body shuddered and compacted. In a blink, a man stood there: tall, bald, and brown-skinned, dressed in the neat suit of the Turks.
"We aren't finished here," he said, in the even voice of a human man.
They all watched the figure uneasily. Human-disguised hands relaxed into a nonthreatening pretense. It could only ever be a pretense.
It was Sephiroth who asked, carefully, "What do you mean to do?"
"Take Shinra," was the simple response, and Ifalna looked down at the corpses at her feet. Even weakened, as Sephiroth said, it had done this. Could it take Shinra?
Sephiroth was shaking his head. "You can't... do that to them."
"You misunderstand. I mean Shinra, the man. He is at the center of this organization, is he not? He gives commands, and they are followed." There was a faint sneer to its expression, as though the kind of command President Shinra exerted were inferior.
"You mean to... become him," Lucrecia was the one to realize. It meant take, in the way it had tried to take the Cetra. "What would you have him command?"
"Humans have begun to study the stars," it said, its gaze lifting towards the ceiling. "I want to leave."
"Leave this Planet?" Lucrecia wondered.
But it turned instead to fix Ifalna with a look. "I am unwelcome."
Ifalna swallowed. "Where would you go?" They could not inflict this thing on another planet, another people.
"I think that is none of your concern, Cetra."
"We can talk about all that later," Sephiroth broke in. "Reinforcements will be coming, if they're not already waiting outside this room. And we have to make sure Aeris is okay."
Lucrecia looked at him incredulously. "You want to put off talking about whether we should install Jenova as President of Shinra?"
"I think we're all in agreement that we don't want them doing any of this"--he gestured to the lab around them--"ever again, and that's enough to start with."
As he spoke, Jenova in its human guise had already turned to leave. A tenuous ally, until the moment it wasn't. Sephiroth seemed to think that wouldn't crumble, that this was some kind of foundation. Ifalna didn't know if he was fooling himself, but would discussion matter, whether it happened now or in the future?
"Let's... let's go on," she said. "It's better not to let it out of our sight."
Lucrecia threw her a worried look, but she nodded. Together, the three of them followed Jenova.
There was indeed a security force waiting outside the door, someone on a radio trying to contact someone--anyone--inside the lab before proceeding. Jenova spoke to them as the Turk whose form it had assumed, informing them that the escaped specimen had at last been subdued, at heavy cost. The assembled men looked at the rest of them and seemed to see survivors rather than interlopers. Ifalna's stomach twisted as she wondered whose illusions overlaid them now. She willed herself to believe they were Sephiroth's.
The men moved past them to secure the gory scene. No one stopped them as they entered the stairwell and climbed the escalators to the highest landing. A night receptionist glanced up at them as they passed her desk, but she knew better than to impede a Turk. One last grand staircase brought them to the sprawling 70th floor space that served as the President's office.
Ifalna had met him before, on those occasions when he had come into the lab to inquire after Hojo's progress. Sometimes he had put the question of the Promised Land to her directly, but most of the time she had simply watched as the two of them discussed her as though she weren't there. To Hojo she had been a curiosity, and to this man, nothing but an investment.
"Rude," the President said in recognition. "Have those Corel riffraff been handled?"
Jenova didn't bother to answer him. It strode towards him, boots leaving smudges of blood on the immaculate floor, and within a pace of his desk, it was suddenly itself again. He choked out a yelp of surprise as its massive form loomed over him, and one of the tentacles shot out to coil around his neck before he could get out anything more.
It didn't kill him. Ifalna thought that might have been kinder, though she was torn on whether that was what she wanted for him. Even she could be vengeful. Even she could think that for a man who had sought to use the Crisis for conquest and profit, maybe this was what he deserved.
Jenova's poison overwhelmed him and left him writhing on the floor. Lore suggested the infection could take days or even weeks to become apparent, but for one infected by the Crisis itself, Ifalna wasn't sure. And, he was human.
As quickly as it had taken on Rude's form, Jenova shifted to become President Shinra, a double standing over him.
"Aeris--" Sephiroth began, and the double held up a hand.
It pressed an intercom button on the massive desk. "Get me Commander Whitaker."
Ifalna watched, feeling less and less connected to reality, as the impostor calmly directed the forces barring the escape of their Corel allies to stand down. The Crisis from the Sky was acting to protect her daughter. Was it because Sephiroth wanted it?
She nearly missed it when Jenova directed the commander to pass his radio to Aeris.
"H-hello?"
"Aeris!" Ifalna rushed forward, even if it took her within arm's reach of the Crisis. "Aeris, are you all right?"
"I'm okay," she answered. "The fighting's stopped, and... Mom, what's going on? You didn't make some kind of deal with Shinra--"
"No, no," Ifalna interrupted, though maybe what she'd done was worse. "We're all right. It's... Did you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
Ifalna looked at the President's double, now seated thoughtfully behind that throne of a desk. The White Materia was silent?
"This man has a child," it remarked, not to her, but as though it were sifting through the details of his life now that its immediate task was complete.
"Rufus," Lucrecia supplied.
"He does not value him." It said it with disdain, as though it were a foolish thing, not to value a child.
"Mom?"
"I'm sorry, I'm here. A lot of unexpected things have happened, and I'm still getting my head around it. I'll meet you at the rendezvous point and explain everything."
Sephiroth met her gaze and nodded, understanding from the way she said it that she alone would go. He needed to stay with Jenova, because it was him keeping it in check, and he couldn't be left to that burden alone.
It was Ifalna who could not contain it, a Cetra, a reminder of a millennia-long enmity. Even if she had been the one who released it at last, even if it had protected her children.
She exchanged a few more words with Aeris, switched off the intercom, and drew back from the desk.
The Crisis from the Sky had been released, and she stood on the top floor of the Shinra building itself, and the Planet was unafraid. Out the massive windows of the office, through the haze of the city, Ifalna thought she made out a single star.